Genesis 48:5

Summary

Jacob declares that Ephraim and Manasseh, the two sons born to Joseph in Egypt, will belong to him (Jacob) just as Reuben and Simeon do. The verse establishes a legal/genealogical claim, placing Joseph's sons on equal standing with Jacob's own firstborn sons.

Key words

• sh'nei ("two of", H8147) — construct form linking the number directly to "your sons," marking the phrase as a bound unit rather than a free-standing count.
• ha-nolaDim ("the ones born", H3205) — niphal (passive) participle, masculine plural, describing Ephraim and Manasseh as those who "were born" — emphasizing the passive circumstance of their birth in Egypt rather than an action they performed.
• bo'i ("my coming", H0935G) — qal infinitive with 1st-person suffix, functioning as a verbal noun ("until my coming"), setting a temporal boundary before which the sons were born.
• li-hem ("to me they [are]", H1992 + preposition) — the pronoun hem ("they") combined with li ("to me") forms a possessive-declarative clause: "they are mine."
• yihyu-li ("they will be to me", H1961) — qal imperfect of "to be" with the preposition li ("to me"), expressing an ongoing/future state of belonging rather than a single completed act.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with ve-'attah ("and now", H9002 + H6258), a temporal marker shifting from prior narrative to Jacob's direct declaration. The core subject, sh'nei-vaneikha ("the two of your sons"), is modified by the participial clause ha-nolaDim lekha be-'erets Mitsrayim ("who were born to you in the land of Egypt"), using the niphal participle to frame the sons' birth as something that happened to them within a specific location. This is followed by a temporal clause, 'ad-bo'i 'eleikha Mitsraymah ("until my coming to you to Egypt"), which uses the infinitive construct bo'i with a first-person suffix to mark the limit of the time period being discussed — the sons were born before Jacob's arrival.

The declaration itself appears twice in different grammatical forms: first as li-hem ("to me [belong] they"), a nominal clause with no verb, stating a present fact; and at the end as yihyu-li ("they will be to me"), using the qal imperfect of hayah ("to be", H1961) to project this status forward, paired with the comparison ki-Re'uven ve-Shim'on ("like Reuben and Simeon"). The repetition of the "belonging to me" formula (li) at both the beginning and end of the naming of Ephraim and Manasseh creates a frame around their names, structurally emphasizing the declaration of their status relative to Jacob's own sons.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'ad-bo'i ("until my coming", H0935G infinitive) as πρὸ τοῦ με ἐλθεῖν ("before I came"), and the Vulgate similarly uses antequam huc venirem ("before I came here") — both shifting the Hebrew's "until" (durative boundary) toward a "before" construction. The Hebrew's double declaration structure (li-hem ... yihyu-li) is rendered by the LXX with a single verb ἔσονταί ("they will be") applied broadly, and by the Vulgate with reputabuntur ("shall be reckoned"), introducing a nuance of legal reckoning not explicit in the Hebrew hayah ("to be", H1961).